How a rabbit became a turtle: In Conversation with Melissa Mowry

Part 1: How she perceived productivity and rest in the past, what influenced this perspective, and what led to change

Field with Two Rabbits (1889) by VIncent Van Gogh

Introducing Melissa

Today, I have the immense pleasure of collaborating with Melissa Mowry and bringing to you this fountain of insight. Melissa Mowry is the writer of Your Attention, Please, a publication dedicated to exploring how to bring our attention back to the present moment, when so much else is competing for it. In her publication, she talks about her own experiences and struggles with work-life balance, the struggle to slow down after having lived such a fast-paced lifestyle, intentional motherhood, and more.

Some of my favorite pieces by her, which I reference later in this conversation, are: “rabbit to turtle,” “I’m ready to work harder, not smarter,” and “Wintering.” But there’s so much insight in the rest of her publication as well, so I invite you to peruse!

I reached out to Melissa back in March, asking if she’d allow me to interview her about her relationship with work-life balance, healthy productivity, and the role that motherhood plays in her life when it comes to these topics. I had read “rabbit to turtle, and then a few others, and was so intrigued by her journey, which in some respects sounded similar to mine.

I was so curious to learn more about what her days look like now, how things were at the beginning of the journey, what the catalysts and process of change were, and what habits and routines, and mindsets she’s adopted to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

This conversation ended up being many thousands of words more fruitful than I originally anticipated, so I’ve divided it up into two parts. Today we will learn about Melissa’s current weekly rhythms, her past relationship with rest and productivity, and the period of transition from rabbit, to turtle. In the next post, we will learn about her current patterns, how she deals with triggers, what she would’ve told her younger self, and a little surprise at the end.

Weekly Rhythms Profile

Usual Wake Up Time: 6:00 AM

Usual Morning Routine: Wake up, make my bed, shower/dress unless I plan to work out later. Make my kids’ lunches and breakfast and sit with them while they eat until the bus comes around 8. Then I eat my own breakfast, do my morning pages (3 pages of longhand journaling), read a bit from a few different novels/memoirs/craft books, and do a 5-10 minute meditation.

Usual Bedtime: 10 PM

Usual Bedtime Routine: Ideally, I get in bed around 8:30-9 after I’ve lightly cleaned up the house and my husband gets the dishwasher loaded. Then I read in bed until I’m tired enough to fall asleep.

Usual Number of Daily Work Hours: My creative work usually takes about 4-5 hours of my day, though often after I’m finished writing for the day, I go for an hour-long walk during which time I typically think more about what I’ve just written or what I plan to write the following day. So maybe more like 6 hours.

Usual Number of Hours Intentionally Spent with Family and Friends Daily: 6 hours

Usual Amount of Daily Alone Time: I’m typically alone all day while I’m home writing, so about 8 hours a day.

Usual Amount of Self-Care Time: I count my daily walk and bedtime reading as self-care, so I’d say about two hours a day.

Conversation

Hi Melissa!

From reading about your story, I’ve learned that you’ve preferred a fast pace in everything that you did basically since you were born! And that stuck with you growing up. But now, you have learned to slow down and have been managing a slower pace of life, even as a mom, when you worked part-time, and now also focusing on your writing career. So let’s first talk just a little about your current relationship with rest, productivity, and work-life balance.

How would you describe your current relationship with rest and productivity?

M: I think I’m finally realizing that rest and productivity are two sides of the same coin, not opposing forces. When I’m well-rested, I have the energy and clarity for creating and I’m infinitely more productive than when I’m tired, sluggish, and brain fogged. I nap almost daily and get eight hours of sleep a night, which probably seems counterproductive to most people. Shouldn't I be trying to maximize my working time? But I’ve learned that I’m simply not one of those people who can function properly on little rest.

D: I love what you said there, not opposing forces. I completely agree. I think there’s been this prevalent mindset in our society, which is thankfully changing, that productivity habits are a one-size-fits-all. You “should” wake up at this time, you “should” go to sleep at this time, you “should” sleep this number of hours, and work this other number of hours. While I do believe there’s a certain level of truth that there are minimums and maximums to what is healthy for us. We’re all different and operate differently.

I think another aspect of it is we all do different things as far as what our chosen careers and lifestyles entail. With that, comes the implication of different rest and productivity needs. Someone whose work is very physical may need a day where they barely move. Someone whose work is very emotional, as it tends to be for artists, may need more idle time than what’s considered average. These are not generalizations, of course, it’s important that we all become keenly aware of our own needs and do what’s actually best for us.

I’d love to learn more about your journey. Let’s walk back.

How would you describe your past relationship to rest and productivity?

M: Imbalanced. I’ve always been a person who could accomplish a great deal in a small pocket of highly focused time. But, when I was younger, I operated under the assumption that it was better if I could string together several of those smaller pockets of time in order to be continuously productive. I didn’t understand yet that the tradeoff to spurts of high productivity has to be intentional periods of rest.

D: I relate to this. When I was younger, I operated quite similarly and always felt guilty when my body and mind seemed to refuse to want to do anything at all after a series of spurts of high productivity. Sometimes I’d push myself through it and of corse, end up worse off.

This question is pretty general, so please feel free to elaborate as much as you feel comfortable with. Growing up, what mindsets or habits, observed or picked up, influenced and built-in you that internal urge for speed? Did you ever fall into the trap of hustle culture and toxic productivity? Can you talk about that?

M: I’m built on my dad’s model in many ways: he’s a very successful person whom I admired greatly when I was growing up, which naturally led me to internalize a lot of his beliefs around hard work and productivity. When we’re not in a healthy mindset, my dad and I both go go go without thinking about the potential consequences of our hustling. In my case, I will eventually get sidelined by an illness or injury, or wind up battling debilitating anxiety or lethargy. After years of repeating this cycle, I now realize this is my body’s attempt to pump the brakes on a car that is moving way too fast. But for a very long time, I thought of this behavior as having no consequences; I was unwilling to see that these outcomes (exhaustion, illness, injury, etc.) were connected to the pace at which I was living my life.

D: Wow…it’s almost impressive how similar this is to my story as well. I remember one of the things that made me reflect and consider that maybe I wasn’t doing something healthy, was that every once in a while during those years of unhealthy behaviors, I would get suddenly sick for just a day or two. That’s it. I’d wake up one day with something akin to a cold, but not really, and would sleep and eat basically all day. Then the next day, I’d magically feel better. It got so bad and yet so recognizable at one point, that when I felt exhausted with how much I was doing, but felt I couldn’t…didn’t have a right to take a break, I would actually desire for one of those sick days to happen just so that I could have a real “excuse” to rest.

Unsurprisingly, after I changed my lifestyle and patterns, I stopped getting sick. In fact, I thank God I have not gotten sick since 2021. And that time was because of severe allergic reactions to my roommate’s cat…to whom I didn’t know I was allergic 🤣

How did school affect your relationship with productivity and rest? How did it evolve through high school, college, and early career?

M: For me, school really exacerbated my issues with speed and productivity. The modern model of education tends to prioritize hard work and achievement over true learning and overall well-being. Staying up until 1 AM to study for a test or put the perfect finishing touches on a paper gave me exactly what I was after: a tangible reward for my hard work. It was highly intoxicating. And once that was part of the equation, it felt essential to continue accumulating more of those rewards in the form of grades, performance reviews, achievements in sports, college acceptances, praise from bosses...the list goes on. It’s a very hard mentality to break, and I still struggle with it to this day.

D: Oh absolutely! It’s also so common for us to tie so much of our self-worth to achievement and output. It took me a long time to tease out those knots myself, and although it doesn’t look the same now as it did years ago, there are times when I didn’t “achieve” some goal (big or small) I wanted and feel the pangs of not feeling good enough. Part of this journey is recognizing how deeply rooted some mindsets can go and having the grace with ourselves to continue doing the work when another thin layer reveals itself, even after having gone through so many of them already.

The transition

You mentioned that the shift to slowing down started with “the realization that doing things more quickly was often more harmful than helpful.” Can you tell us more about that?

M: Often, I would find myself doing literally ten things at once, all at great speed. And that’s when mistakes would happen. I’d drop and break my favorite bowl. I’d forget to add the attachment to an email at work. I’d mix up my sons’ sandwiches when packing their lunches. Sometimes, these mistakes would be fairly minor and sometimes they were pretty huge, like when I missed the fact that the uptick in arguments between my sons was a sign of a big underlying issue we needed to address as a family. I really believe that we can only do one thing well at any given time and that doing things as quickly as possible is an invitation for unnecessary, and sometimes costly, mistakes.

D: The number of times I’ve ended an email with “see attached” and there was no attachment is staggering. I completely agree!! I grew up in a “you can multitask!” environment as well, but found it so exhausting when I tried to. Oh, the vindication I felt when I learned that it is not technically true…. Especially when multiple tasks are using the same regions of the brain and are not essentially ingrained in motor memory. But that’s a complex conversation for another day.

My condolences to you over the loss of your favorite bowl….

How did you approach the process of learning more about slowing down and work-life balance?

M: As always, I started with outside resources. Initially, I almost never feel equipped to figure these big, thorny issues out on my own, so I hunt down books and podcasts and articles that will help me understand the truth I already know to be true deep down. I quit my last paying job after an intense panic attack, the first one I’d ever had. For months, my body had been screaming at me to get the hell out of there and I just wouldn’t listen. The panic attack was my wake up call; I walked out of the office that day and never went back. In the wake of that decision, I read books like Burnout by Amelia and Emily Nagoski, Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown, and Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I started to understand that other women were experiencing this same revelation: that our bodies are not equipped to handle the stress we’re putting them under and they’re begging us to do things differently. Those books (and many more) put me on the path to slowing down and starting to change my beliefs and habits around productivity and rest.

D: This part is so true. I love how deep deep down we can notice when something is off if we pay attention, even if we do not yet have the language to fully understand or express it, or the tools to fix it.

As you’ve gone through being a student, to a mom, to a mom and part-time employee, to a graduate student to the stage you’re currently in, how do you manage these periods of transition when it comes to adjusting your schedule, priorities, and creating new rhythms that work for that season?

M: It’s all a lot of trial and error. Thankfully, I’ve never been adverse to change and, in fact, I typically embrace it. When something isn’t working for me, I go back to the drawing board and start over. There’s always a period after I’ve left one way of doing things and before I’ve stepped into something new that makes me feel completely helpless and off kilter. But I’m learning that this in-between period is a crucial part of the process, and I shouldn’t force my way through it. There’s so much to be learned in those periods of waiting.

D: As uncomfortable as they are, I absolutely agree. There’s a sweet joy when we find ourselves truly embracing and rejoicing in those uncomfortable in-between periods, in the messiness of change, when you still have the pants of the previous outfit and only one sock on, still unsure of what sweater you want to wear.

How did becoming a mom challenge you to slow down, or did it make you feel like you had to speed up even more?

M: Motherhood in the time of social media encouraged me to do more and do it better. Everywhere I looked there was someone sharing or selling a system to hack motherhood, whether that was getting my newborn on a sleep schedule or devising a color-coded meal planning system. It pains me to say that, in those early years, I bought into a lot of it; in many ways, I saw motherhood as just another avenue for receiving the praise and rewards I was looking for. But, spoiler alert: raising children is a long game. The work we put in as mothers rarely has immediate rewards and most of what we do is neither praised nor even noticed. Once I got off social media and stopped sharing about our lives online, I felt that I could finally slow down and let my sons dictate the speed of our day to day lives. Both my sons are curious, empathetic beings and often they were trying to get me to pause and usher a ladybug off the sidewalk so it didn’t get squished or notice the way the light was coming up over the trees. In my haste, I was missing so much of it. I feel grateful I was able to slow down in time to avoid missing it all.

D: That is so so beautiful. I’ll admit, when I asked the question, I was hoping to read that having children had that effect on you because I’ve heard similar stories from other moms, and I just think it’s so precious —the innocent wisdom that they inadvertently carry. I’ve also witnessed in my family how absolutely exhausting it is to feel a need to speed up with every subsequent child, as opposed to leaning into the period of slowness that they inspire.

The present…to be continued

To read part two coming later this week, make sure to subscribe!

Also, please remember to check out Melissa’s publication below and subscribe to hers as well! We’ll see you soon!

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Don’t walk this road alone

I know that even doing these things can be hard when you’re absolutely drained, and maybe you need and want a little bit of guidance, maybe you want to talk some things through or have someone see into and through your situation to lend you a hand.

I would love to be that person for you

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There are three ways you can work with me

🌼 1-Hour Reset to Rest Mentorship Call ($97)

In this call:

• I will help you organize your schedule in a way that serves you in this season

• Find and create significant pockets of space for rest

• Address one critical limiting mindset that’s keeping you stuck,

• And set some boundaries to maintain the progress we’ve made in the call.

You will walk away with a personalized schedule which will include space for all of your priorities and space for rest, a list of boundaries to implement with yourself and others to help the schedule be respected and keep you rested, and you’ll walk away thinking differently about rest.

If you follow the plan, within just a few weeks your life will look completely differently, and you will feel rejuvenated.

PS: once you schedule your call, you’ll receive a confirmation email and a link to a short questionnaire. This will help the call be as fruitful and efficient as possible ☺️

🌼 1:1 Back to the Garden Coaching Program ($1800)

If you’re at the end of your rope, burned out and exhausted, or just need longer term support, a one-time call is not sufficient for the level of support you need.

Imagine this, three months from now, your life no longer feels like the constant hustle you’re experiencing, burning out at both ends, waking up already tired, never having enough time for everything you need to do much less what you want to do.

Instead, you wake up well rested, looking forward to a day that feels it was painted in watercolors. Life feels soft. Your nervous system isn’t frazzled. You have time to get done everything you need to, and have plenty of time for hobbies, for friends and family, for you. You can hear yourself think. Silence is no longer uncomfortable but a welcomed friend. Life feels like walking barefoot among the daisies, being hugged by the branches of willow trees🌼🌳

In this program you can expect to:

• Gain a deep understanding of your values and start living a life designed with habits and rhythms that truly align with you

• Implement simple but effective systems for burnout recovery and deep rest, that will also support and sustain your new emerging lifestyle

• Create new sustainable habits for healthy productivity, and intentional rest

• Establish boundaries around yourself to support and protect your growth and peace

• Learn how to adapt to new demands in a way that is still aligned with your values and the life you desire and deserve

• Increase self awareness of personal rest needs and how to fulfill them before it’s too late

Specs

• 12 coaching calls spaced out weekly over 3 months

• $1800 one time payment (payment plan available via PayPal)

• In between session text support

Are you ready for rest?

Reach out, ask any questions, I’m here for you!

🌼 Last but not least, for more resources on burnout recovery, rest, work life balance, and healthy productivity